The whispers of a rumor
by Casey Toh
Summary: Set after the events in "Man of Steel", Superman seeks out the whispers of a rumor of a man who can help train and hone his skills. Possible slight AU.
1. The whispers of a rumor

**Author's Note:** This comes right after the 'Man of Steel' movie that was aired in June, 2013, but takes place in Gotham City instead of Metropolis. Slight AU, maybe. Not beta-ed.

**The whispers of a rumor**

Batman felt the very subtle shift of wind that played with the scalloped edges of his cape, tugging at his shoulders with gentle motions. He didn't need to turn to know who it was. Ever since the alien invasions by those Kryptonians who had devastated Metropolis and Kansas, he'd researched and dug up every piece of information he could on the being the world had named 'Superman'.

Metropolis and Kansas were still in their first year of rebuilding all that had been destroyed. He'd taken flights there to assess the situations and he had not been happy. As Bruce Wayne, he'd channeled donations numbering millions of dollars to various charitable organizations and companies helping in the rebuilding efforts.

"Hello." A pause. "You're a hard man to find, even for me."

"Get out of my city."

"I need your help."

Batman rose from his crouch in a smooth move and extended his move into a leap that took him off the roof he was on. Halfway through his fall, he held his grapple gun out and fired off a shot that secured his swing to the roof of another building a street or so away. The small, swirling gusts of wind that accompanied Superman wherever he flew followed the Dark Knight and he had to scowl at that as the other man easily kept pace with him.

He finally stopped and surveyed his city, taking a moment to survey Superman from the corner of his eye. He gave an inward sigh. "What do you want? How did you find me?" He could almost _feel_ the other man smile and Batman bristled at that but kept silent.

"Like I said, I need your help." Superman let his feet touch the ground and uncrossed his arms, holding them loosely at his sides. "And well, you're a rumor, but chase enough rumors and you get close to the truth." He waited a few minutes for Batman to respond, but when the Dark Knight proved brooding and silent, Superman sighed aloud. "I want you to train me."

"You're an alien," Batman growled out. "Look at the ruins in Metropolis and Kansas. You don't need training."

"Yes, I do." His voice turned soft. "I think a lot of the destruction could've been avoided if I were trained more," he admitted. "One of them…one of my own people said that I fought like I was raised on a farm, which is true as far as it goes. But if anything else like this happens, I want to be able to help defend Earth."

Batman took out a pair of binoculars, observing some moving shadows on a street that had caught his interest. "This isn't even your home."

"Don't worry about those." Superman nodded towards the people Batman was observing. "I can see and hear them. Just some drunk kids being a bit too loud." A pause. "My parents are…were human, too." The barest hint of an edge came into Superman's voice. "Adoptive parents, but my father and mother nonetheless."

"Were?"

"Dad died many years ago, saving our dog from a tornado."

"And you weren't the one who saved it."

There was the loud exhalation of an angry sigh. "He didn't want me to! He thought that the world wasn't ready for me and sacrificed himself so no one would know of my powers."

It felt like a few long minutes before Batman tucked away the binoculars and rose to his full height, turning to face the Man of Steel (another moniker the world had given him) fully. His hooded eyes stared steadily, and his posture was so still and grounded Superman wondered what training the other man had received, and what had driven him to such great extent as to do what he did night after night.

"Look, if you don't want to do it, I'll look for someone else."

Another long pause, before Batman turned away to face the streets again. "I'll train you."

With his heightened hearing, those softly-uttered words reached Superman's ears clearly. He didn't know why, but he smiled. This Batman wasn't as scary as everyone said he was. He held out a small but heavy box that he'd brought along, and Batman took it without questions, knowing that the other would simply provide all answers.

"I was going through some of the wreckages of the Kryptonian ships…I found this inside the box. I don't know what it's called, but I think it can hurt or even kill me." He stopped, considering how much more he should say, considering how much he could trust this Dark Knight, this legend that many had come to fear for his war against crime. "I want you to have it, as a sign of trust and…in case you need to use it." He saw Batman simply tuck the box away without acknowledgement of his words.

"Be in Gotham in a week. 11pm. Meet me at Gotham Harbor. There are a few islands some miles out to sea that we will use." Another swift movement, another leap, and the Batman was gone.

It left Superman impressed, and he thought he'd made a good choice following up on the whispers of rumors he'd heard.


	2. Willing to do whatever is necessary

Author's note: I finally gave in to the reviewers asking me to continue this drabble and decided to continue it. I got all your hints! Lol. However, since I'm not so good with long stories and convoluted plots, this story will remain a series of drabbles heading I know not where yet. Is that okay with you people hounding me? :p

Author's note 2: I want to write a reply to one of my anonymous reviewers asking why Kryptonite will be on Kryptonian ships. _My headcanon_ is this: in one scene, Jor-El (or his simulation, at least) explained to Lois that he built the ship she was on. By extrapolation, he must have also built a lot of other Kryptonian ships. As a scientist, he probably should have done research into the various forms of Kryptonite on his home world and since the ship Zod was on was a prison ship, it made sense to him (or well, to me) that he'd place green or red Kryptonite to weaken the prisoners if need be. Hope this answers the same question anyone else may have.

**Willing to do whatever is necessary**

"You're a hard man to catch."

Superman tried out the imitation of a glower he'd seen Batman do enough times on him. The first few times, it'd sent the shivers of fear down his spine, even being as powerful as he was. Batman may be just a man, but the training he'd done and the mental fortitude he showed created someone larger than a mere human, becoming a myth, an urban legend, with whispers at dark corners floating on the wind. There had been many times when he'd allowed the control he had over his hearing to slip just a little, and he'd heard whispers of conversations that held the Batman's name over and over.

"The glare doesn't suit you."

The voice held a slight melodious tilt wrapped with the same hardness he recognized in the person who had been training him for the past few months. Despite everything, Superman was curious. He gave the slightest tilt of his head and asked, "And who might you be?"

The man before him was dressed in a simple but smart suit, sleek and grey. The Man of Steel narrowed his vision and changed the focus of his consciousness a little, and the sudden visual change from seeing flesh and blood to being able to see through things caused him to blink for a second. The stranger was armed with some flat knives but not much else.

The presence of knives on that man made Superman wary, a habit he'd picked up from Batman.

"My name is Henri Ducard." He did not extend his hand as the customary greeting people used. "I've followed news about you for a few months."

"And?"

"I know that you saved the world, even if there are those who won't say so. You were willing to do what was necessary at the end. It was right for you to kill Zod."

The reminder of his first kill made Superman cringe inwardly. The loud snap of Zod's neck as it broke still lingered in certain nightmares the Man of Steel had on his worst nights. He tried to maintain the facade of disinterest but Ducard had caught the flinch of his lips.

"I'm here to extend an invitation to you to join the League of Shadows."

"It doesn't sound like a good name already."

"Doesn't it?" There was the ghost of a smile on Ducard's lips and he shrugged slightly. "The League of Shadows maintains balance in the world. Where there is too much evil, we balance that. When Man, and now aliens, I suppose, try to harm the world, we are there to stop that. The shadows allow us to do whatever is necessary for us to achieve our goal."

"I understand. Thank you." Superman took a step back and turned to fly off.

"You will not join us?"

He didn't think that Henri Ducard deserved the time he took to explain things, but Superman tried anyway. "What I'm hearing is some megalomaniac's vision of how he wants the world to be. Thank you for approaching me. I expect not to see you again."

As Superman took off, Ducard let his words be carried away by the wind. "We are the League of Shadows. You may not see us, Superman, but we will be keeping an eye on you."


	3. Flash bangs

**Author's note:** Hm…well…another chapter up. Would love reviews to know how you like where I'm going with this.

Also, suggestions on scenes you'd like to see chapters on would be much appreciated.

**Flash bangs**

Clark groaned as he pulled himself to his feet, his unsteady weight causing him to ground a few more crevices into the hard desert sand. The shrill ringing in his ears was starting to give him a headache, and he saw only a blind whiteness as he tried to blink.

"What?" He decided to let his body touch the ground firmly. Maybe it wouldn't feel like it was tilting so much that way. He rubbed his ears and blinked more quickly, and slowly, both his hearing and vision returned. "What?" he asked again.

"You still get distracted too easily," the gravelly voice returned, sounding a little too loud.

Clark winced and struggled to stand. The man before him didn't offer him a hand up.

"You get distracted –"

"I know. I know." He allowed himself one more massage on his ears before he pulled his focus inward, rubbing the pads of his thumbs and second fingers together. Martha Kent had taught him how to focus on her voice and block out everything else when he was a child. But while the memory of his mother's soothing words still stayed strongly in his mind, he found that he'd needed some other focus to ground him, to bring him back.

His vision finally cleared enough so that he could see Batman standing with his legs slightly apart, his body's weight balanced and grounded. Batman gave him a cursory glance, and then lifted another stun grenade and bounced it in his gloved hand. He had kept his cowl, gloves and boots on, but had exchanged the heavy and too-warm Kevlar suit for a lighter triple Nomex-weaved shirt and pants that gave enough protection from the scorching sun as they trained.

It had surprised Clark (he was still unable to think of himself as 'Superman') greatly when he had reached his rented apartment in Metropolis one Tuesday night after work to find a typed-out note which could only have come from the Dark Knight.

_Take the weekend off from your job. Come to Gotham at 0100 on Saturday. Training at Sahara Desert. You are flying us there._

Clark wondered what other places the man would come up with next. The moon?

He saw the flick of Batman's wrist barely a second before the grenade arced from his hand. Clark moved more sluggishly than he'd anticipated, slowed down by the remnants of pain from the previous flash bangs and ultrasonic transmitters that had been designed as tiny capsules, and from what he'd come to think of as the green kryptonite sitting on a rock about ten meters from him.

"Distracted," he heard Batman say again, followed by the ghostly whisper of more movements.

Before whatever weapon Batman had thrown at him could go off, Clark launched himself towards where he remembered the man had been standing at. His hands registered air for a moment before he felt his arm being twisted and he was slammed into from the side. The flash of a memory surfaced and he recalled a Lexcorp. (funny how he could still remember the words printed on that oil tanker) truck being hurled at him. He had been distracted for a few moments by the sudden explosion and the warmth of the flames before a Kryptonian had taken him down.

Clark felt the edge of Batman's hand land on the back of his neck in a strike, but his physiology must have been stronger than he'd supposed because he grunted from the force but felt little pain otherwise.

He felt the weight of the other man move off him and sat up, rubbing the back of his neck. Maybe Batman wasn't so scary any longer, but he was definitely a brutal trainer.

"Hey," he said as he remembered an incident a week back. "Have you ever heard of someone named 'Henri Ducard' or some group called the 'League of Shadows'?" He figured if rumors had it that Batman was as good a detective as people said he was, he would have heard of those names.

The sudden stillness from Batman was different from anything Clark had felt from the man before. It felt like Batman had just froze. Veiled eyes stared at him, demanding an explanation.

"He approached me last week when I was patrolling. Something about joining the League of Shadows because of doing whatever was necessary." His voice softened as he once again heard the crack of Zod's neck in his mind.

"Stay away from them." The words were definitely gritted out, indicating a mood worse than Batman's usual state. "Gotham. Now."

Clark sighed. He'd have to do some investigation on his own then.


End file.
